


I've still got love for you

by bradleymartin



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, F/M, Harry pov, Summer Romance, not remotely a ghost story despite what the summary implies, tswift's Folklore has my whole soul especially Seven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:47:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bradleymartin/pseuds/bradleymartin
Summary: Harry always thought the house next door was haunted. Then a girl appears and lights up his summer, even though her house might be hiding something worse than ghosts.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Allie Pressman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	I've still got love for you

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on Seven from Taylor Swift's Folklore. Please give it a shot even if you don't generally read first person!

_Time passes, and I think of her._

_Sometimes I think I see her. The exact shade of her blonde hair is burned into my memory, and I see it everywhere. I’ll walk through the halls between classes, a flash of gold in my peripheral vision, and I turn like she’s calling out my name. But of course she isn’t there._

_I can’t even remember_ her _name._

_She must be different now. I’m different now. It’s been eight years. I can drive now — well, learning, technically. I’ve had girlfriends. I’ve learned some lessons. There’s not all that much I’m good at, but at least people like me. I think. Sometimes it’s hard to tell. It was never hard to tell with her._

_But maybe I’m not so different, either. When we go to the lake that summer that I’m almost sixteen, the first thing I do is look for her, out by the rocks where she always used to stand._

_And it takes my breath away._

_Suddenly I can’t understand why I’ve been mistaking her so many times over the years. Because once she’s in front of me, I know I haven’t seen that color gold since I saw her last. Her hair is loose now, no longer in those braids. But she still stands just as sedately, so strange at age seven. I drop my bag and rush out to her._

_Then she turns, and the face I’ve always that I’ve always had memorized is there in front of me, nearly a decade older. She’s always been suspended in my mind, young and cute like a porcelain doll. But here she is, that blonde hair and eyes the same shade of blue as the lake behind her. But now she’s so gorgeous I feel my heart stop. It feels like a scientific discovery, and I know immediately that every crush I’ve ever had has originated right here. She smiles at me, that same grin that takes over her whole face._

_I don’t know what to say. I’m older now. I’m different now. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m the same person. This pounding in my chest isn’t like it was back then._

_“Hey,” I say, inadequately._

_She tilts her head at me. “Do you remember me, Harry?”_

_I almost laugh, but instead I just grin. My name sounds different when she says it._

_“I remember.”_

__

* * *

My family spent most of our time on that lake — at least, it felt like most of the time, when I was a kid. The weekends, Christmas, the summers. The only times that really feel like _time_ when you’re a kid. The only time when memories mattered.

There was a house next to ours. There were other houses, too, but we couldn’t see them from our house, and those other people seemed to exist purely as pier numbers or the quick, perfunctory wave as their boats went by our house. The house next to ours was huge and imposing. Not the normal style — cottage but on steroids — but grand, Victorian, the kind of house that looked from the outside like it might have secret passageways.

No one was ever there, though.

* * *

I was seven when they showed up. Two little blonde girls and their parents. I watched from the dining room window, crouched down low on the ground so that just my eyes were above the windowsill. Like a spy.

My mother walked by, holding my baby sister, Jane. “What are you doing, Harry?” she asked, standing by the blue curtains and peering out, too.

“Our new neighbors are here,” I said, and it sounded grown up. Having news.

She laughed. “They aren’t _new_. They’ve owned that house longer than we have. We bought this land from them.”

“What land?” I asked. There wasn’t any _land_. Just a house and a lake.

She just smiled at me. “Well, be nice.”

I turned my eyes back to the house next door.

* * *

The first time I saw her, I saw the back of her. Two French braids all the way down her back, tied off in pink and ending in golden ringlets. Her hair looked white in the morning sun. She was in the space between our houses, sitting on one of the rocks that lined the lake.

“Hi,” I said.

She turned around, looking shocked to see me. She was around my age, maybe a little younger. She was pretty, with her blonde hair and big blue eyes. There weren’t any girls in my school that pretty.

“I’m Harry,” I said.

She smiled, and it made me warm like the sun behind her. She told me her name then. I don’t remember it anymore.

* * *

The summer days that always seemed important were filled with _new_ importance. Suddenly I was her tour guide. She wanted to be outside all the time, and I wanted to be with her. She was bright and cheerful. Different from me. 

There was a swing hanging from the tree that had grown over the lake. She asked me to show her first, so I did. I got onto the swing and started moving, suspended between earth and sky and water, back and forth until it felt like I might be able to displace time, too. Then I let myself go, at just the right moment. There was no more confusion, just that ephemeral moment in the air replaced by the corporeal reality of the water. I crashed through all the way to the bottom. And I sat, just for a second, looking up at the sunlight refracting a million different ways through the water. Then, with one push of my legs, I was back in the open air.

My eyes found her before I knew I wanted to see her reaction. She had a hand clapped over her mouth, and she looked relieved to see me.

Next, she tried. She was swinging back and forth, again and again, her body still and tense but her shadow dancing over the land and water. Eventually, she stopped moving. I tried not to laugh when I scrambled out of the water to help her down.

“I couldn’t do it,” she said. “Don’t make fun of me, I just couldn’t do it.”

I didn’t make fun of her. There were plenty of things I couldn’t do, too.

* * *

She made the whole world look different. I don’t think I really cared about waking up, until that summer when she was there. It felt like that land my parents bought was that ten feet between our houses, where I could look out the window and see if she was sitting on the rocks. A good purchase.

“She’s out there a lot,” my dad said, in the voice he used when he was worried about work. But I was out there just as much, so maybe he was worried about something else.

* * *

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she asked, laying in the sun half on the rocks, half in the water. I was still floating in the lake.

I thought about her question, feeling the water lightly drag me towards her. My dad was in finance and my mom did something at the mayor’s office. Neither of them ever seemed to enjoy themselves. Maybe you have to be miserable when you’re an adult.

“Dunno,” I finally say. “Something cool. You?”

“I don’t know, either.”

I nodded. “Who cares, anyway?”

She laughed. I poked my head up to look at her, and she was on her stomach, looking at me. I stopped floating, curving my body until I was sitting in the shallow water. I ran my hand back through my hair, the water going down my back instead of in my eyes.

She splashed me, and we both laughed before commencing a very deadly water battle.

* * *

The first time I went into her house, I knew I had been right all along. It was creepy. There was dark paneling everywhere, swallowing up all the light coming in from the open windows. The white curtains were billowing from the hot summer air, and I could see the dust floating in the golden sunlight streaming inside. But most of all, it was quiet. Too quiet.

We were both families of four, but it didn’t feel like anyone was here. My dad was always on his phone or playing with Jane. My mom loved music — new, old, and in between, and it followed her around everywhere, her steps always light from it. Jane, too, just starting to form words, seemed to realize how much she loved talking. She was always babbling or laughing or sometimes screaming. Even in such a large house, there was hardly ever a corner of quiet during the day. 

Her house was different, though. I could hear my footsteps squeaking on the hardwood. It felt like I was venturing into a cursed land. There was no one to greet me, and she walked on ahead like this was something normal. I followed after her quickly, trying not to seem scared. I was the boy, and so many months older, after all. How dumb.

“Where is everyone?” I hissed to her.

“Probably upstairs.”

Then I remembered that first day, that other blonde girl I saw with her. “You have a sister, don’t you?” I asked her. I felt dumb, asking this after three weeks. She probably thought I was dumb, but she was just so hypnotizing. Even then, watching her get a glass of water from that dark kitchen. I wondered what it felt like to be fearless.

“Yeah,” she said, grabbing a bag of M&M’s from the cabinet and throwing herself into a chair at the little kitchen table. I sat down, too, and she tore the bag open and poured the candy straight onto the table. I watched as the colors dispersed, and picked up a green one close to me.

Then I heard footsteps above me, and I looked up, more frightened than I wanted to be.

“That’s just them,” she said.

“Why are they all upstairs?”

She had an M&M nearly to her mouth, and then she rapped at the table with it. She dropped it and then buried her face in her hands. “My sister is sick,” she said. She lifted her head just far enough that I could see one of her blue eyes in the darkness. I just sat there, mouth open.

“How bad?” I asked softly, like it was a secret.

“Really bad.”

I nodded. “I mean — she’ll get better?” I said.

She laughs, but it doesn’t sound like the normal kind. It makes me feel cold all over. “Yeah,” she said after a minute. I just looked at her — her pretty blonde hair and blue eyes, surrounded by her dark house. It was like she emitted light. I chose to believe she was telling the truth. Because I wanted it to be the truth.

I thought about telling her that she should spend more time with her sister. After all, who couldn’t be healed just from looking at her? I hadn’t even known I had wounds, but I felt better, after all these weeks. But I didn’t tell her, not — for once — because I was embarrassed. No, it was because I was selfish.

I wanted her to spend time with _me_.

* * *

We didn’t go to her house again. I guess I didn’t know there were worse things that ghosts. She started coming to my house instead. She talked to my parents and played with Jane, fitting in more effortlessly than I did. My parents loved her, my mother always giving her sweet tea and cookies. When I joined in with the group, I felt like myself but better. My video games and TV shows were abandoned in favor of any idea she might have.

The next time she got on the swing, she threw herself off it, curling herself up into a ball before hitting the water, the splash hitting even me. She was never scared after that. “Scary things are only scary the first time,” she told me proudly, pulling herself half out of the water onto one of the rocks, looking like Princess Ariel.

“Sometimes there’s only one time, though,” I said, and her big blue eyes got even bigger. She leaned her chin on the rock, her dripping wet hair dyeing the whole thing pitch black.

I jumped in, too. We floated in the lake all day.

* * *

One day she didn’t come out. I tried to remember what day it was. I asked my mom, and she said July fifteenth. I don’t know why I asked. Days weren’t going to mean anything until it was time to go back to school. I thought about going over there, knocking on the door of that big, dark house. But I couldn’t do it. It was too scary.

I wondered if it was her sister. I’d probably brave the ghosts for her, but even then I knew that I couldn’t possibly be wanted. So I went back to my old life. Video games and the TV and holding up Jane’s hands so she could very happily walk everywhere.

It was a perfectly fine day, but the colors looked a little duller without her.

* * *

“Do you ever just want to scream?” she asked me the next day. That was all the explanation I got.

I thought about it. I wanted to cry more often than I wanted to scream, but I still nodded. It seemed like something I should want. Especially looking at her, her blue eyes wider than ever, like she was asking about a universality. I would’ve agreed to anything.

She pulled me away, across the little road out houses were off of, through all the empty land surrounding us. I had never walked that far by myself. But I wasn’t by myself. She walked until we were in a field, something unkempt and wild, like she looked now. She turned to me, her face saying this is what she was looking for. I was just glad she found it.

Then her mouth opened wide, and she screamed. It wasn’t the loud shriek I was expecting, used to Jane’s cries. I expected it to pierce me through, but it didn’t; it was loud and guttural and chilled me until I felt cold as winter despite the heat. She walked away from me, turning around so that as she did it again, all I could was her back, arched from the strain of it.

She turned back around, looking like an angel with the wildflowers growing around her, almost as tall as her. Pretty and golden and smiling now, almost glowing with it. It was hard to believe that she had just made that sound. I wouldn’t have believed it, if I hadn’t just heard it.

“Why do you want to scream?” I asked her.

She shook her head so vehemently her whole body turned back and forth. She did it so long that it frightened me. Then she said, “I hate being home.”

I understood. Her house _was_ scary. “Are there really ghosts?” I asked, my voice dropping to a whisper.

“Not yet,” she whispered back. “That’s the problem.”

I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but I nodded. Maybe she knew, like I did, that a house like that was bound to have ghosts.

Or worse.

* * *

She jumped off the swing every time now. Her eyes were the same color as the water.

It’s been a whole week since I watched her screaming, and I still haven’t asked about it. But, for some reason, seeing her sit up in the water made the words come out of my mouth before I could think about it, “Is your sister going to _die_?”

The movement was so slow, that it took me a second to realize she was nodding, not even looking at me. Her nod was nothing more than the smallest ripple in the water, so weak it didn’t even make it all the way over to me.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked, unable to stop myself.

“Something’s wrong with her heart.”

She got out of the water, and for a second I thought she was going to stalk off back home, but instead she got back on the swing. She stood on it this time, moving her whole body to make it swing widely back and forth, and then she launched herself off of it, jumping far out into the water. It was like she didn’t have any more fears.

For some reason, this time I flinched when she hit the water.

* * *

She stayed in our house one night. I saw her parents from far away as they talked to my parents, and they looked at me. I felt myself shrink under their stare; I didn’t have any idea what she had told them about me, but I knew I couldn’t live up to any of it.

She didn’t say much. She slept in our spare room, and when I woke up, she was in Jane’s room, reading out loud from one of her picture books. She looked up at me when I walked in. I had never seen her like that, blonde hair like a cloud, in a nightshirt with Disney princesses on it.

I wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come out. I came in and sat on the rug next to them. She laid down on Jane’s rug, and so did I. We didn’t say anything, but I could feel it coming off of her. Something bad was happening.

I thought I heard her crying, but I didn’t look at her. I thought that would be enough, but I felt my insides twist up until I couldn’t help it, and I was crying, too. I still didn’t look at her. I didn’t want her to know.

* * *

Bright and early the next morning, I was looking out the living room window when I saw her parents start to take suitcases out to their car. Their faces were angry.

“Are they leaving?” my mom asked, gently moving the white curtain to look above me, just like she did the first day they came.

“What day is it?” I asked.

“August 1.”

I nodded, not taking my eyes away from them. They went in and out from the house, with bags and boxes. Everything. They weren’t leaving to come back. “They look mad,” I said.

“I guess it’s the ghosts,” she said, laughing.

I looked up at her, but she was already walking away. I rolled my eyes. It sounded so silly now.

I was older then.

* * *

I was sitting on the swing, not really moving. I could’ve turned back around and to see if they had left yet, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to see her leave.

Then I felt the swing move, and I looked over, startled. There she was, sitting next to me. She moved her legs back and forth like a reflex, the two of us swaying, just a little.

“You’re leaving,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said.

I felt better with her there, and I knew I would feel worse when she left. I guess this was my peak — seven years old.

“I had fun,” I said, and it sounded lame.

“Me, too,” she said, and when I turned to her, there was a smile on her face. I just stared at her for a second, at the golden braids going down her shoulders, her blue eyes like a thunderstorm, her skin tan from all that time out here with me. I wondered if I left any mark on her like she left on me. Something deeper, something I didn’t have words for yet.

_I hope everything is okay?_ I wanted to ask, but before I could, she started swinging us harder. Before I could even think about it, she pushed on my back and then I fell into the water. It was only scary for a second. Only for the first second, and then I was in the water. By the time I got back to the surface, she was almost all the way to the car. She turned around and raised her hand.

“See you, Harry!” she called.

Then she left.

* * *

I remember her, her back to me — bent from the weight of a scream or standing sedately by the lake or arched protectively over Jane.

I’m glad I met her, for a million reasons. When people talk about childhood, I think this is what they mean. Caring without reserve, laughing without consequence, wanting to see a friend so bad it was a physical ache. If it hadn’t been for her, I don’t think I would’ve had that. I’ve always been cautious in all the wrong ways, out of control in all the wrong ways.

Now the only things I do without reserve are all the wrong things. Drinking too much, going to parties, having parties when my parents aren’t here. Even sex, now. Sometimes. Like I said, I’m older now.

But when I look back on her, I was just happy. I was happy for myself and worried for her and I don’t think I would know what it means to care for someone unconditionally, if it hadn’t been for her. Sometimes that’s the only thing that makes me feel better, knowing I’m capable of that.

I loved her then. That’s one thing that hasn’t changed — I’ve certainly still got every kind of love for her. It’s strange, how that works.

So I’ve thought of her.

* * *

“Do you remember me, Harry?” she asks, standing there in front of me.

“I remember,” I say. I open my mouth, but there’s one thing I _don’t_ remember. Then, suddenly, walking closer to her, I _do_ remember. I remember as clearly as how she looked that first day, looking like an angel in the morning sunlight. “I remember, Allie.”

_Allie_. Of course. Now that I’ve said it, I can’t believe I forgot. My brain fills it into my memories, all the times I called to her. All the times I looked at her house that summer and ever since.

She grins. She closes the distance between us and gives me a hug. I hug her back, tightly, feeling like she’s stitching up every cut I’ve felt, missing her.

I ask her about her sister, and the answer isn’t good. She cries, and I think I do, too. 

* * *

They’re back for the summer. She talks more now, freer with her words where she used to be free with her actions. She complains about her cousin and her school and her parents. It’s all good natured, though, like she has to dig to find complaints.

I could watch her talk forever, the way her hands move like she’s used to talking to her cousin. Her eyebrows are dark now, and they move with even the slightest shift of her expression. It doesn’t seem fair, that she got to turn out so beautiful.

We’re swimming when she asks, “Do you think we can both still fit on the swing?”

I laugh without even thinking. She’s leaning towards me in the water, her long blonde hair dripping wet. I feel pulled towards her, like I always have, but I force myself to stay still. I’m afraid that if I move, everything will change and there’s some spell that will be broken. Like this older girl might be that ghost I’ve always feared.

It’s ridiculous. I know that, but this feeling is so strange and new. I’ve never been eager like this before.

I think I’ve just found the line between lust and love.

“Let’s try it,” I say, channeling her high energy just as easily as I did when we were seven.

She grins, and I hoist myself out of the water, sitting down on the swing first. I take up nearly the whole bench myself, but she sits down half on top of me. My arm wraps around the rope nearest to me, and she does the same with the rope on her side. Her legs slide over my thighs, and I put my other arm on top of them, at first just wanting to stabilize her before I let go. But touching her skin feels like something I’ve never known, and I look up at her. I see her tongue trailing along the bottom of her lip, and I feel my throat go dry.

I meant to give her warning, but I move my feet without even thinking, and then we’re swinging back and forth. She giggles, just like she did back then, and her hand lets go of the rope. For a second, I think she’s going to jump in, but her arms wrap around my neck instead. I feel myself blush.

“Remember the first time?” she says. “When I was too scared?”

“Yeah. I understood.”

I understood then, and I understand now. We swing back and forth, between the water and the earth and the sky, and I still understand. Because kissing her is the only thing I want to do, but for a second, I just can’t. I’ve kissed girls before, but for some reason, this time it scares me. She’s so pretty it hurts, like her blue eyes are literally piercing me somewhere in my stomach.

“I was so weird then,” she laughs.

“No,” I deny immediately, offended on behalf of all my memories. I think of her back then, and I add, “No, you were just… peculiar. And intense.”

She laughs, shifting her weight on the swing.

This time, the pull of her is too strong. Even after all these years, when she’s around, she’s the only thing that matters. And then I’m leaning towards her. There’s a quick flash of a smile on her face and then I kiss her. She kisses me, too, and it’s so soft at first, and then her arms tighten around my neck and we’re _kissing_. Her tongue is against mine and I’ve never felt anything like it. Her fingers in my hair, my hand going to her bare waist, her bare back. We’re both still wet from swimming, and our skin moves over each other so easily that it feels like this was _meant_ to happen. She wriggles closer, her legs pressing against my thighs to move herself incrementally. Then she moves a little faster, and the whole swing almost topples.

We break apart, gasping, my hand still on the rope the only thing that kept us from falling. She laughs into my shoulder, her breath warm against my skin. “We should probably jump in,” she says, and I nod, swinging us again so that we’ll be back over the water.

We jump in together, and come back up together. I think that I’ll love her forever.

“Stop looking at me like that,” she says, laughing, splashing water in my face. That makes me laugh, too. “We have the whole summer.” Her arms go over my shoulders again, her legs wrapping around me under the water. My hands around her waist, holding her there against me.

The whole summer. She says it so easily like it might really just be easy. I’ll be able to fall in love with her until it’s as natural as breathing, I can learn everything about her until there’s nothing left in my brain but her, and I can live every day like this summer is eternal. Maybe it will be. That other summer, eight years ago, still feels eternal.

“True,” I say simply, and then I kiss her again.

I think I’ll go anywhere with her.

**Author's Note:**

> I have another Hallie fic if you liked this one :) Modern-day royalty! What could be better!


End file.
